Combat Ranking stymied

[Roger Wilco Jr]

Yes, Roger, you have to kill ships ranking at your level or above to progress.

Thanks, Flip. Just curious - has it always been this way? I remember when working towards master that I started concentrating on higher ranking opponents, but I thought that was just supposed to speed things up, but lower ranked opponents would still get you there. It also seemed that the bigger ships were worth more, like a mostly harmless anaconda was better than a master sidey. But maybe that was just for bounties, and not necessarily for ranking up. Of course, I also thought ranking was based on total bounties earned, but that clearly is not the case (anymore).

[Flip]

Not sure if it's always been like that or not. I suspect that it hasn't, though.

For some time, now, I've got the suspicion that ranking up gets increasingly difficult as time passes. The first guys who got to Elite in combat did so with around 9000 kills or less. Victoria had to wait until she got more than 21700 kills combined. And with 10350 I'm still Dangerous. So...

Anyway, when Victoria got above 20000 with no result, she filed a bug and asked to have her account checked. The dev who replied specifically recommended her to kill ships of equal or superior rank. So that's an "official" answer.

[Trinity Star]

The information that was provided made it clear that killing 100+ low ranked Anacondas in a RES counted almost nothing to my combat rank (Deadly at the time), I made Deadly at around 7800 combined in a much bigger ship than Flip's, looking at how he is progressing makes me think they have moved the threshold upwards again.

[Casey Casem]

My observations seem to support that combat ranking is based on the rank of your opponents.

I killed about 200 mostly harmless NPCs and not one pct increase. I then decided to go bounty hunting for elite NPCs by pulling them out of supercruise. After only 3 elite kills my rank went up a pct.

I kept doing that until I ranked up to Dangerous

[Ozzy81]

My observations seem to support that combat ranking is based on the rank of your opponents.

I killed about 200 mostly harmless NPCs and not one pct increase. I then decided to go bounty hunting for elite NPCs by pulling them out of supercruise. After only 3 elite kills my rank went up a pct.

I kept doing that until I ranked up to Dangerous

From my observations, you need 6-7 elite kills to get 1 pct from deadly to Elite (flying Python)

[stummies]

Saw some question in here about RES, they are still broken. There is a bug which has been acknowledged, but no ETA on addressing it. I've been reading plenty of "guides" and suggestions about the 1.3 RES hunting and so far everything I've read seems to be entirely based around confirmation bias. I've visited systems mentioned in posts, tried what they've detailed brought them success, flew to low security systems with decent rings... nothing appears to make a difference.

My rank has been going up slowly though regardless of the ranks I'm shooting, I'm dangerous ranked and have in the last week gone up 3%. Most of the combat I've been doing has been testing RES spawns, and blowing up Alliance Bureaucrats for PP points. The only high ranked kills I've gotten were 1 RES spawn that had small dangerous/deadly ships, and the few deadly/elite Adjusters that hunted me down for defecting to another PP power.

[UnmarkedBoxcar]

I'm having a near impossible time finding anything other than Mostly Harmless-Novice ships.

[uvelius]

Thanks, good to know. I am quite tired of stalling at Expert forever, and had a curious experience that I went up 1% after killing quite a few minor ships which had a higher combat rank.
Now that my lovely little Python Bloody Mess is painted appropriately, I will take her out for some prober action and hope to get my rank up. Although it is at 58% hull right now due to a deliberate test of her at a Gold Trap which almost tore her apart ... an Anaconda and some small fry that were too much (since she already was down to 70% hull at the time). Boy the capacitors deplete FAST if you only have a D rated PP ...

[UnmarkedBoxcar]

Boy the capacitors deplete FAST if you only have a D rated PP ...

Don't worry, with an A ranked you can shoot muuuuuuuuch longer